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Decisions, Decisions

One future CEO helped her ascent by taking a job that no one else wanted.

By

Philip Delves Broughton

Updated March 17, 2011 12:01 a.m. ET

With all the heavy breathing inflating the latest technology bubble, Harlan Steinbaum's "Tough Calls From the Corner Office" is a reminder that there are still executives who take years, rather than months, to build their careers and still businesses where value is still tethered to earnings.

There are even people, as Dickensian as they may seem, who make their money without the help of social-media-driven, peer-to-peer payment systems. They build machinery rent cars, run banks, sell insurance and make...